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So Umboo and the other wild elephants who were caught at the same time as he was, stayed around the lumber camp, and did work for their white and black masters.
Umboo was taken away from his mother. "Oh, where am I going?" he cried to the tame elephants, one on either side of him. "I want to stay with you, Mother! Where are you taking me?" "Do not make such a fuss, elephant boy," spoke one of the tame ones. "You will come to no harm, and you will see your mother again. You are going to go to school.
"Please do not step on me!" hissed the snake, for that was his way of talking. "Please do not put your big foot on me, elephant boy!" "But I am afraid you will bite me," said Umboo. "No, I'll not do that," answered the snake. "I do sometimes bite, when I am hungry, but I am not hungry now. Besides, you are quite too big to bite."
"Maybe this is the same elephant you fooled with the lemon," said the second man. "It couldn't be," spoke the wet one. "That was a long while ago, on a ship, and an elephant can't remember." "But I did remember," said Umboo, as he told his story to his circus friends. "I could remember that man even now, if I saw him.
But the man spoke to him, and the tame elephant talked to him, and finally Umboo saw that the engine did not get off the shiny rails. "Well, if it stays on them it can't chase after me," thought Umboo. "I can run to one side, but that big, black animal, that puffs steam out of the top of its head, can't. I guess I'll be all right."
These were the babies of the herd who were too small to ride safely on the backs of the big creatures. "Pooh! I'm bigger than you! I can swim like the other elephants!" said Keedah; a large elephant boy, as he looked up and saw Umboo on his mother's back. "I don't have to be carried across a river! I can swim by myself." "And so will my little boy, soon," said Mrs. Stumptail.
"That was it Jumbo!" cried Humpo. "He was a very big elephant." "Yes, I guess he was," said Umboo. "I have heard of him, but I never saw him. He was an African elephant, and they are all large. Poor Jumbo!" "Why do you say that?" asked Chako the monkey. "Poor Jumbo?" "Because he is dead," said Umboo.
All the other elephants gathered around him, and off he started, leading the way through the green forest. "Now if I go too fast for any of you baby elephants, just squeak and I'll stop," said the big, kind elephant. "We will go only as fast as you little chaps can walk." "You are very kind," said Mrs. Stumptail, helping Umboo, with her trunk, to get over a rough bit of ground.
"What are you doing?" asked Keedah. "I am smelling for sweet roots," was the answer. "My mother showed me how to do it. Do you want me to show you?" "I learned that long ago," said Keedah. "Why I can even get palm nuts off a high tree by knocking the tree down. Can you do that? Smelling out earth-roots is nothing!" "I think it is something," spoke Umboo.
As Umboo and his mother were eating the palm nuts, along came Keedah. "Hello!" cried the other elephant boy. "How did you get the palm tree down, Mrs. Stumptail?" "I did it," said Umboo. "You?" cried Keedah. "No! You are not strong enough for that!" "No, I wasn't strong enough to knock this tree over with my head, or pull it down with my trunk, until I loosened the dirt at the roots," said Umboo.
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